My books on Smashwords were recently migrated to Draft-2-Digital. Last week, I received an email from them, inviting me to try Apple Digital Narration. Apple partners with publishers like Draft-2-Digital to create audiobooks narrated by AI voices. Authors complete a few steps, including selecting a voice, and retain all rights if the book is accepted. There’s no charge but no guarantee a book will be recorded. Only certain genres are considered, and I was delighted to learn that my latest short story collection, Living Vicariously in Wyoming, might qualify.
Before going any further, I decided to try one of the digitally narrated books to see how easy it would be for a reader like me, with a visual impairment using a screen reader, to listen to the book on an iPhone. The site included voice samples and links to books from which the samples were taken. One sample drew my attention. I clicked on the link to the book, and after reading the synopsis and sampling the book in the player, I eagerly snatched it up for only $3.
I needn’t have worried about accessibility. I found the audio player in the Books app on my iPhone easy to use. I could play and stop the book, skip forward and backward by thirty and fifteen-second increments respectively, and access the table of contents and select items in the table of contents to be played. I could easily find out how much time was left in a book, and there was a sleep timer. Except for a few times when common words were mispronounced, I forgot an AI, not a human, was narrating the book.
Sold! By the way, please stay tuned for a review of this book coming here soon.
At some point, I might pay to have one of my books professionally produced for Audible. Meanwhile, the idea that one of my books could possibly be made into a commercial audiobook at no charge to me made me smile.
Your Turn
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The Weekly Smile for the 16th of June, 2025 #weeklysmile | Trent’s World (the Blog)
Photo Courtesy of Tess Anderson Photography
Photo Resize and Description
by Two Pentacles Publishing
New! Living Vicariously in Wyoming: Stories
Copyright 2025 by Abbie Johnson Taylor
Published independently with the help of DLD Books.
Image Description written by Leonore Dvorkin of DLD Books.
As defined in the first story, living vicariously means living your life through someone else’s. You’re invited to live vicariously through the lives of the people in these stories. There’s the lawyer who catches his wife in the act with a nun. A college student identifies with a character in a play. A young woman loses her mother and finds her father. And a high school student’s prudish English teacher strenuously objects to a single word in her paper.
In Wyoming, as in any other state, people fall in love, and sometimes relationships are shattered. Accidents, domestic violence, prejudice, and crimes all occur. Lives are torn apart, and people are reunited. Ordinary people deal with everyday and not–so–everyday situations.
The 25 stories in this collection, most of which are set in Wyoming, are about how the various characters resolve their conflicts—or not.
Click here for more information and ordering links.
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